Rare colour photographs of the captivity enjoyed by Japanese-Americans in WWII thanks to the tender hospitality of Uncle Sam have been causing much controversy amongst Japanese online, with many keen either to burnish their victimhood or praise the relatively humane nature of “the USA’s concentration camps.”

The newly published photos date back to WWII, when the land of the free was indiscriminately locking up those of its ethnic Japanese citizens it did not send off to die fighting on the European frontlines:

Some 110,000 Japanese-Americans, most of whom were American citizens, were forcibly imprisoned in a series of “internment” camps in desolate locations under military guard from 1942 onwards, on the basis that they were all possible spies. Canada also operated similar camps.

The US government issued a formal apology for their treatment in 1988, and has paid out over a billion dollars in reparations to its victims. Germans and Italians were not subject to similar imprisonment.

The photos, by Bill Manbo, are published in an anthology entitled “Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Internment in World War II.”

The topic arouses a certain amount of indignation amongst latter day Japanese, not that their own nation’s ghastly wartime treatment of non-Japanese in any way compares favourably:

“As expected of America!”

“The greatest human rights violation of the 20th century!”

“Actually some of them look quite happy.”

“Vivid kimono they had there, really nice to see colour photos like this.”

“Beautiful kimono! And good physiques on those wrestlers.”

“None of these people would have been able to afford kimono if they had stayed in Japan, most of them were just poor farmers there.”

“They are wearing them wrong anyway, more like yukata.”

“Why release them now? They are just trying to whitewash the camps as somehow being ‘humane.'”

“The real issue here is that they just let Germans go about their lives.”

“Looks more pleasant than contemporary Japan at any rate.”

“These aren’t Japanese, they are nikkei Japanese-Americans!”

“Even today Japanese-Americans are as anti-Japanese as Koreans.”

“Who cares about this stuff! Spread more pictures of them bombing us!”

“America is a military nation, not a Christian nation. You’re nothing th”

“This is just propaganda. Japanese should never forget they had all their property seized and after the war were subject to massive discrimination.”

“Go and learn about Unit 731 and lieutenant general Shiro Ishii.”

“And what’s wrong with trying to stop the spread of disease?”

“How Japan was treating its prisoners of war:”

“The 442nd was America’s greatest military unit ever and won more medals than any others!”

“Just looking at the wealth of the US at the time, you can really see why Japan was beaten.”

“Those who couldn’t stand having all their property taken and being locked up as enemy aliens could always go and fight on the front lines in Europe.”

“This kind of horrible treatment is a real issue. Japan was feeding and treating its captured enemy soldiers properly, they just thought the nori was black paper!”

“Japan’s US and European POWs were nothing but skin and bones when they were released…”

“You can’t compare POWs to civilians!”

“And most of these prisoners were American citizens!”

“Even Japanese, soldiers included, were starving at the time…”

“Of course, they just neglected to record the horrible conditions of these internees!”

“According to a book by one of the guys in the 442nd, the internees each were mandated to have a meat ration of at least 220g a day – Japan was fighting an ultra-wealthy nation which even gave its prisoners the equivalent of a steak at a family restaurant each day…”

“Seeing how differently they treated their Japanese citizens to the ones from Germany and Italy infuriates me, but compared to how the Nazis were treating their prisoners this is heaven.”

“Fancy those American brutes not setting up gas chambers for them!”

“Japan needs to set up these kinds of camps for its Korean citizens.”

“They treated Japanese internees humanely, whilst Japanese were making their foreign prisoners eat wood…”

“This is pure racism! Filthy Anglo-Saxon American brutes ought to grovel on the ground in apology to the Japanese!”

I don't think that post referred to the use of human remains but what happened to the people that were seen as enemies of the Nazi state (or just disposable). After all, which part of the process is the more inhumane?

Funny how 2CH don't even take their comments seriously yet SanCom just boils over every time a few lines get crappily translated. Makes me wonder how hypocritical people can get.

Oh and before some douche who can't speak a word of japanese comes in and claims he knows the truth behind the real jap mentality, I've been a gaijin in japan for the past 6yrs, fielded in politics and economics and I absolutely respect the people. So rage on, it's plain amusing to see : )

BWAHAHAHHA pathetic outsider thinks he knows japan after spending measly 6 years in it. Typical gaijin mentality thinking they know how a place works. This is like monkey claiming to know people after living in a town for 6 years.

You japanese? I like how you think 6 years as an outsider anywhere makes you wiser about japanese than a 5 year old japanese kid. That statement just broadcasted your childish ignorance about your REAL status in the eyes of japanese.

You really don't know anything about japan. I can just imagine how japanese people look at someone like you.

im here at euro, have a chinese co-worker, met his grandfather, grandpa told me story how his father and 2 sisters got raped and killed and how he and his mom got out of nanking, oldman still hold a grudge abd this was like 3 or 4 years ago!

Japan has admitted and apologized no less than 55 times [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan], including from the emperor(s), but without explicitly detailing every crime committed, Korea and China simply don't accept that the apology happened.

@01:24 Definitely true, and Korean and Chinese politicians have brought up the Japanese atrocities purely to rally citizens behind them, as a rather tasteless hatemongering political move to make themselves more relevant.

But while prime ministers have been decent about addressing the atrocities, it's still rather problematic that the Japanese government and people continue to deny this stuff ever happened e.g. textbook revisionism, censoring of works that detail Nanking, insisting that Korean comfort women were willing prostitutes, etc. It'd sort of be like if much of the American public, despite the government's apologies for internment, generally agreed that internment didn't really happen or wasn't a big deal, and schools never taught children that yes, America too screwed up big time in terms of human rights.

How should they compensate? They paid South Korea money, and suggested they pay money to all individual victims. South Korean goverment wanted to use the money to build up the country and that's where they went. Think it was only some years ago this was revealed to the South Korean public.

Furthermore, China and Taiwan refused monitary compensation.

As far as the Yasukuni shrine goes, people seem to forget that there are normal soldiers and other people there too. Just as in my cemetary back home, there's a rapist buried, now that shouldn't stop me from visiting.

I'm not saying Japan is in the clear, we all know what they did and it was freakishly horrible.

Nanking was an atrocity from Japan and I wont deny that, but Japan weren't the only dicks. The communists and republicans agreed to fight together but the communist party wanted the republican party to be destroyed so they didn't show up to help defend the biggest city in China.
The republicans, when they heard of this, burned every single scrap of useful land and demolished as much buildings as possible before fleeing, leaving the civilians to fend for themselves.
Then when the Japanese arrived and seen that the city was worthless, let their soldiers completely loose on it. All dicks. Japan did the worse damage, but all dicks.
The Chinese government and Taiwanese government still owe the people of Nanking an apology. Japan gave one, even if some right-wingers deny it, the sane ones did apologise.

People need to educate themselves before repeating myths as fact. The revisionist textbooks [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Society_for_History_Textbook_Reform] do exist... and they're soundly rejected by almost every school in Japan. Saying that Japan still denies their war crimes in schools is like saying that American schools all teach creationism instead of evolution.

This is well understood by every government in the world. It's what Japan is using here, it's what the US is using for its Asian interference, it's what both Koreas are using with respects to its unified history, and it's what China is using with respect to Tibet.

But perhaps it is best for humanity. We're terrible at making effort happen and these issues take years worth of research to arrive at any passably neutral, informed conclusion. Maybe it's just best that we bury everything under secrets...

Of course it was a traumatic and horrible thing that was done, and not easy to forget, holding a grudge against people who had no control of those other peoples action, or were not even born yet is not beneficial to anyone, though it may be self destructive.

Most of the people who ordered or participated in that massacre are probably dead already.

I honestly wouldn't blame the countries and their people who were wronged by Japan for not accepting the apology. The atrocities of war run deep and through many generations. It's hard to forget.
Regardless, I don't think these photos highlight what the Japanese would like them to highlight. These photos don't make the camps out to be the worst places in the world that text books and other historians would like people to believe. Maybe that's because you wouldn't expect prisoners to be smiling?
Personally I like the family in the American fashion. They're really cute.

Definitely agree, but you can't help but notice that the American treatment of this-- a formal apology, tons of reparations, and teaching schoolchildren how horrible the internment camps were-- is a huge difference from Japanese treatment of their atrocities-- denial that it happened, removal of all references from textbooks, and blaming the victims for "agreeing" to be comfort women.

This is the sole reason why Japan is trying to whitewash the Nanking history portion in WW2. Since the Chinese and koreans won't accept the apology, Japan has to either ignore it or just state one line of history about it. Ask any japanese exchange students about this and you'll see a giant "?" above their head just like in metal gear.

I suppose when you got neighbors like japan has, even the most sincere apologies are meaningless. However, japan shares equal blame in that they are not particularly mature or adult like in their attitudes either.

Sort of like asking any current mainland Chinese about things their government has banned. While the Tian An Men Square is politically lensed by the west what one Chinese citizen expressed her thought about it was scary. You don't get that sort of vitriol in a free information society.

Sankaku Complex seems to rely A LOT on opinions generated by an online collective such as 2ch to produce articles such as these. Please note that 2ch is an online web board frequented by MILLIONs of people on a weekly basis. What do they do? Post their opinions about anything and everything. Trolls and pro-Japan nationalists are scattered all over the place, in pretty much the same fashion you'll find 4chan defensive of anything American.

The fact that online opinions suddenly constitute journalism is beyond me. You might as well ask other Internet collectives such as 4chan Redit, and Youtube their "take" on this "issue." Don't be surprised what they are going to say for the "Japs" in pretty much the same way they said for those damn "Yankees" "Barbarians" or "evil Koreans."

Simply put, topics such as these on the Internet tend to bring the worst out of anybody, and don't have a place in a news site/blog that is supposed to talk about the latest trend/topic/show from Asia. This is old news and its best not brought into debate.

Also, I wish Sankaku were to re-frame from quoting opinions generated by anonymous 2ch-ers. Opinions generated by anonymous users tend to be nasty and are not worth reading.

bandwagon argument is nonsense . What japs did to chinese has nothing to do with what americans did with japs . Of course to be fair it would be better to be in US concentration camp as japanse than being in Japanese concentration cap as american during that time .

background deal that would put such knowledge into right hands who could develop countermeasures.

knowledge is knowledge. US did nothing wrong in using these scientists for their own ends, basically turning their dirty knowledge into a weapon against such atrocities and using medical knowledge gained from them to ensure CDC and G2 knew exactly how to act in order to spare pain and develop medicine and vaccine instead of poison.

Idiots who naively think and take in only face-value facts need to understand deeper implications behind actions of a nation state.

You fucking bigot. I suppose you think German Americans are responsible for the atrocities the Nazi party committed during WWII? Or Muslim Americans for the attacks on 9/11?

These were American citizens that had their land, their property, and their rights taken from them without any due process. And that's really all there is to it, end of story. The atrocities that the Japanese military committed has NOTHING to do with this, and it sure as hell doesn't make Japanese American's hypocrites.

This is one of the most embarrassing infringements on the values we supposedly treasure as a nation, and it's just sickening that there are still people trying to defend it.

First, the people that were interned did not lose their land or property. When they were released, they were allowed to return to their former homes.

Second, they were afforded due process under the laws of the time.

Third, while interred, the internees were treated quite well and very well provided for.

That being said, I don't agree with the internment process of the day, but that was a much different time. And since then, the US government has lived up to their mistake and, as was pointed out in the article, have paid over a billion dollars in reparations.

Now, as you say, comparing the Japanese internment to the atrocities performed at that time by other nations does not excuse the action.

But in comparison the internment, although an embarrassing piece of american history, is nowhere near as bad as other things that had and were happening across the world at the time.

They did not have their property or lands taken from them. They were allowed to return to their homes after they were released.

They were also well treated, well cared for and had quite a few liberties while interned. College students were allowed to continue going to campus and, if the need was legit, others could get permission to leave the camp. they just couldn't stray too far from their designated destination and they had to be back by a certain time.

Was it a travesty of justice? Most definitely. Was it an "atrocity"? Absolutely not.

As has been said, it was a different time and the outlook was very different from what it is now. People and governments were being super paranoid because of the war and, sadly, bigotry was a lot more prevalent at the time. This doesn't excuse what happened, but it does explain some of it.

Sorry, but you are wrong about property not being taken. They were rounded up and told to take only those items they could carry. People living in apartments lost all their furniture and anything they could not carry aboard the buses and transports used. People living in houses could not pay their mortgages, and thus lost the houses as the banks repossessed them, meaning they also lost everything IN the houses. Many of the people had viable businesses and ended up losing EVERYTHING as the building owner's sold their equipment and merchandise because the Japanese businessman was in a camp hundreds of miles from the business and unable to operate it or pay bills.

They were treat shabbily. Yes, it wasn't as bad as some countries in the world, but by the standards the US prided itself on they were treated terribly. Notice, that while the Japanese were rounded up (and not a single case of espionage was ever proven), the German citizens were not, and there were many cases of espionage proven against Germans in America. It was simply that the Japanese were easy to see and discriminate against.

"These were American citizens that had their land, their property, and their rights taken from them without any due process"

Actually, no.

Their land and property was not taken from them. And they were interned with "due process", only the process at the time was, admittedly, messed up.

Internees also had a lot more freedom than people think. College students were allowed to continue going to their classes and people could get permission to leave the camp. They just had to make sure that they didn't wander too far out of their way on the way to and from where they were going, had to have a legitimate reason for leaving the camp and had to be back in the camps by a certain time.

I don't condone the actions taken at the time, but as has been said, times were different back then. A less enlightened time when it came to bigotry and a time when paranoia was running rampant because of the war.

And, based on what other nations were doing at the time, the internment was one of the least offensive "atrocities" to happen during the war.

Although it could be considered a travesty of justice, people were certainly not being killed or maltreated. They were just being contained.

You also have to give the US credit for owning up to their mistake. They've made a direct, formal apology (although it took a bit too long to do IMO) and, as the article states, have paid over a billion dollars in reparations.